South of the Lake, North of the River: A teacher in Zambia 1965-1968

By John Livermore

For years after John Livermore left his teaching post in Zambia in 1968, the letters he wrote home to his mother in Colchester remained stashed away along with newspaper clippings, photographs, and other documents from his time in Africa. Encouraged by his daughter, Crystal, John has put together his experiences in writing for the first time.

John had been teaching Geography at a Colchester school when he was recruited by the Ministry of Overseas Development in London to teach in Zambia. Arriving in Ndola in mid-winter, John meets an old university friend and journalist Geoff Chapman, who asks him to document his time teaching at Mungwi Secondary School just seventeen miles outside Kasama. Working with a vibrant staff from the UK, India, Canada and South Africa John gets stuck into teaching life. He arrives in the aftermath of the conflict between the Lumpa sect and the ruling part UNIP.

Before Christmas Rhodesia’s UDI results in petrol rationing. Travelling some of the worst roads in Tanzania he completes an East African safari in a newly acquired Land Rover.

He then moves to the Southern Province and joins the local Kalomo Club rugby team. John visits Kafue and Chobe River game parks and spends a night in the ruins of Zimbawe. Before leaving Zambia he travels with friends from Victoria Falls to Cape Town.

A fascinating exploration of life in 1960’s post-colonial Africa, South of the Lake, North of the River is an in depth look at the politics, culture-and teachings-of the time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jul 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781800469969

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Copyright © 2021 John Livermore

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ISBN 9781800469969

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Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

To Geoff Chapman journalist and jazz critic with Toronto Star(died 2012) and Cox Sicumba former Zambian Ambassador to Mozambique (died 1986 in an aircrash en route to Mozambique from Mbala Zambia)

To Colin Carlin for his personal(and contemporary ) photo and one of the Lake Press Abercorn.

Contents

Preface

Prologue

Arrival and an Old Acquaintance

Mungwi

Chiz and the Vauxhall

Geoff Chapman and Udi

Food Strikes and Theatricals

A Land Rover and a Strained Marriage

East African Safari

Kalomo

Kafue

South to Zimbabwe

This Sporting Life

Diversions and Excursions

Broadcasting

Unfinished Business

From Victoria Falls to the Cape

Preface

This book has had a long genesis.

For years after I left my teaching job in Zambia in 1968 I hoarded the letters I wrote from there to my mother in Colchester. These and other documents have been carted between my different homes, ending up in my present residence in Hobart. These papers and photos include press clippings from The Guardian and The Times of Zambia, and copies of the Rhodesian-published Central African Examiner. My former wife Christine wrote up a detailed log of our trip round East Africa in 1966, which I kept and found very informative. My daughter Crystal has urged me to write this chronicle and has been very supportive and helpful.

I was lucky to contact Colin Carlin in 2020, who, with his father John, ran the Lake Press in Abercorn (now Mbala) in the Northern Province of Zambia. He kindly read an earlier draft and gave me guidance regarding my description of Abercorn and its community at the time I was there. He commented, ‘I have seen no other book that describes the adventures of those who spent a few early years teaching overseas in the postcolonial period.’

In 1974 I was having drinks with staff at the University of Tasmania Law School. Sir George Cartland, then Vice Chancellor of the University and a former Deputy Governor of Uganda, said to Professor George Wade of the Geography Department (former member Rwanda volcano region expedition 1936), ‘Don’t believe a word he says – he’s been to Africa.’

You have been warned.

John Livermore

Hobart, 2021

[e-mail]

www.johnlivermore.com

Prologue

The man at the Ministry of Overseas Development in Stag Place, London W1 pointed to a large map on the wall behind him. ‘That’s where teachers are needed urgently at present – Zambia.’

Despite the fact that I had taught geography at St Helena School, Colchester, the name seemed unfamiliar. I moved closer for a better look. Below the Congo, wedged between Angola and Tanzania, with Rhodesia to the south, was an uneven butterfly shape with ‘Northern Rhodesia’ still inscribed across its length.

Back in Colchester, my wife Christine said that I should have accepted the job on the spot. I wrote a letter taking up the Ministry’s offer and duly signed the Crown Agents’ contract. So, in August 1965, through the offices of the Crown Agents, Chris and I found ourselves on a VC10 night flight bound for Central Africa.

Arrival and an Old Acquaintance

At Entebbe in Uganda they were playing The Last Time I Saw Paris in the airport lounge. The early morning light picked out islands and swamps bordering Lake Victoria as the plane took off on our last leg to Ndola. We flew above cloud until we reached the Congolese-Zambian border. The bush below was dotted with trees and villages clustered in dried-up river valleys. Just before Ndola the aircraft lurched in a pocket of turbulence, then settled into its landing path on a clear August morning.

We had arrived in Zambia’s winter but the temperature was not markedly different from that of the warm airstream that had covered southern England before our departure. A gentle breeze blew along the tarmac, rustling the dried grasses at the edge and cooling the crowd that jammed against the wire-mesh fence as we walked to immigration control. To our consternation, the immigration official informed us that no work permits had been issued in our names. Thankfully, at this crucial point a hot and tired district education officer, Mr Cooper, intervened and explained to the controller that the Ministry of Education were responsible for our entry. He then gave the news that our disembarkation was at Ndola; not, as we had been told earlier, Lusaka.

We still had to fly on to Kasama, so our accompanying crates were unloaded and I received the waybill. We, with other bewildered expatriates, were put on a coach to The Rutland Arms. This turned out not to ,be an English pub, but a nostalgically named hotel which had in its beginnings served the pioneer mining town and the railway linking the Congo with the Cape.

Our first impression of Ndola and Zambia was one of red dust, dryness, concrete-hard termite hills, and low houses set back from sprinkler-fed lawns. The Rutland Arms was a rambling timbered building trying to mimic a village inn but ending up as a cross between a seaside residence and the Deadwood Saloon. In the evening, along with teachers who were flying up to Kasama, Isoka and Abercorn in the Northern Province, we joined the local residents in the lounge bar to down one of the two brands of bottled beer produced in Zambia: Castle, or its sweeter sister, Lion. One of those knowing and cynical locals who had seen our like come and go so often appeared familiar to me. I recognised him as Geoff Chapman, a fellow student from Sheffield University. He was equally surprised at my presence in Zambia. We recalled our pasts, Chris was introduced, and the talk poured out with the beer. Geoff had married a lively girl from the Arts Faculty, Anita, who had tragically died in childbirth. After this sad event Geoff had drifted along until, six weeks ago, joining The Times of Zambia as a reporter, working harder than ever before. The Ndola office was understaffed, the chief problem being the collection of news from the remoter areas away from the Line of Rail – very difficult in a country three times the size of the UK.

The political situation, as Geoff saw it, was just settling down after the Lumpa Revolt in the north; a rising based only thirty miles from Mungwi, where we were headed for the new school. There was intense rivalry between Kenneth Kaunda’s ruling United National Independence Party (UNIP) and the opposing African National Congress (ANC) led by the veteran politician Harry Nkumbula. This friction had led to petrol bombings in the townships. For all this, Geoff found the people friendly, the country interesting and the job exacting. Before he left with his journalist friends he told me he would be visiting Kasama in three weeks, when he would find out how bush life was treating us.

At the early hour of six in the morning, the tea boy shattered our sleep. In the dim colonial past the British in their exile had ensured that the African mind understood the paramount necessity of tea, to the extent that it had to be taken frequently, even to the point of inconvenience.

At the airport the weather was cool and fresh. Before boarding the DC-3 for the north a hitch had to be overcome with the crates. The freight officer insisted that they could only accompany us if the plane could find room for another 190 kilos. Fortunately there was space on board.

As the plane took off, the country unrolled like a map. The round heads of the trees were interspersed with ant heaps, and small charred clearings showed signs of cultivation. That landscape met the eye for miles as the engines throbbed their way through the warming air. Orange tracks showed up clearly even at five thousand feet, for everything else was a uniform grey in the depths of the dry season. Little rain had fallen since March, and not until the first week of November would moist winds sweep off the Indian Ocean’s East Coast and relieve the thirsty heart of the continent.

After a brief stop at Fort Rosebery it was an hour’s flight to Kasama. As we approached the vast sinkhole that is Lake Bangweulu, dry rivers crept like dead fingers below until they linked with the reedy shores. During the dry season the lake receded considerably, but two years earlier it had flooded beyond its normal boundaries, covering an area larger than Wales. Salt encrustations raised by sun and wind glistened under our wings, and far to the south Livingstone’s heart but not his remains rested at Chitambo.

My neighbour on the plane was Mrs Mary Richards, BSc. Eighty-two and well known in Zambia, she spent her time travelling in the remote areas of the Northern Province and South-West Tanzania, collecting botanical specimens. She was returning from a visit to farming relatives in Kent, and trenchantly voiced views about declining morals in a country I would not see again for nearly three years. Her courage and opinions proved typical of that European generation in Africa, who observed the rapid shifts in the old life and mistrusted the new.

Mungwi

We landed at Kasama, the provincial capital of the Northern Province of Zambia. Reddish laterite dust blew up from the plane’s wheels and billowed towards the concrete control tower. We were met by Simon Allison, the district education officer, and his wife Olive, who had been a student at Sheffield University